In one way or another I keep stumbling on threads / discussion on certifications. Whether or not certifications are useful, or whether a certification means you’re skilled. Here’s my ten cents on the subject.
Discussion
Here are some of the arguments against certification:
- I’m experienced, why bother with a certification!?
- Everybody can pass an exam by using cheat sheets which are available on the internet!
- If you are certified it doesn’t mean you are skilled! You should get experience!
And most of the time – and probably by no coincidence – it is the people which are not certified that use these arguments. Now I will try to counter those arguments based on my experience with developers.
Reinventing the wheel
“I’m experienced, why bother with a certification!?”
Answer: It keeps you from reinventing the wheel!
Have you noticed it’s always the experienced developers who keep reinventing the wheel? And it is pretty obvious why they reinvent the wheel. They are experienced and know how something can be solved. They don’t know however that that same solution is already in the framework. A framework is like a toolbox and without reading books you will only scrape the surface of that toolbox. One reason for reading books… preparing for an exam.
Real life example:
One day a developer had to show me something awesome he developed. He developed an extension method to transform a SPListItemCollection into a data table. He is an experienced developer so the code looked lovely. Nicely refactored, no duplication etc. etc. But his jaw hit the ground the moment I showed him the “GetDataTable()” method. He wasted a whole day of work(if not more) to reinvent the wheel.
Do you know:
- Mail definitions?
- TraceListeners / Switches / TraceWriters?
- HashSet?
- <system.net><mailSettings>?
- Health Monitor / WebEvents?
- Membership, Authentication and Profile providers?
- DbProviderFactories?
And that’s just to name a few of the things I see reinvented continuously.
And lets be honest. If you are that experienced and if you are so good at what you are doing, how hard can it be to pass an exam? Put your money where your mouth is!
Make yourself useful
“Everybody can pass an exam by using cheat sheets which are available on the internet!”
Reply: You are not everybody!
If you plan to pass an exam by cheating, indeed, don’t bother with it. It’s just that you can not use that as an excuse for yourself. You are responsible for the way you pass your exam, let the others be responsible for the way they pass their exam.
Getting experienced
“If you are certified it doesn’t mean you are skilled! You should get experience!”
Reply: True!
But being certified is a great basis for becoming skilled! You’ve learned what tools there are, and now you can get skilled in using those tools. If you don’t know what tools there are, it will take a lot longer to get skilled and you’ll probably get yourself skilled on how to get a screw into the wall with a hammer.
Conclusion
To me there is NO EXCUSE for not being certified. If you are that good and experienced… prove it. If you can’t prove it, you are probably not as good as you say you are.
Cheers,
Wes